


The Joy I've Named Shall Not Be Tamed

by 100percentsassy, gloria_andrews



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Tennis, and lots of it!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-08 05:23:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11074920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100percentsassy/pseuds/100percentsassy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloria_andrews/pseuds/gloria_andrews
Summary: Louis is a flash-in-the-pan tennis star trying to mount a comeback after what should have been a career-ending injury.  Harry, who walked away from tennis just as he was poised to dominate the sport, is his new coach.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the super-great song [That Summer Feeling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zmy2oBGmPc) by Jonathan Richman.
> 
> We'll try to post every couple weeks. Check 100percentsassy.tumblr.com to see our next projected posting date!

_ Prologue _

 

Louis’s hair was in his eyes.  It was raining in Delray Beach, the air oppressively humid, and he could barely see the ball coming at him through the wet, straggly locks that had escaped his headband.  Matošević had him off balance.  Still, Louis was confident.  If he could slice it deep cross court, he could get his feet back under him and regain control of the point.  He just needed to shift to his left.  An easy little hop.

Louis made his move, but the slick court was unforgiving.

His ankle twisted under him.  He slipped just as he connected with the ball, the inertia of his follow through making it feel like his body was being torqued uncontrollably.  His racquet went flying, framed for a moment against the cloudy sky.   He went down abruptly on his hip.  Ligaments tore, the joint dislocated, and Louis jackknifed on the court, screaming.

*

They talked about it on ESPN afterward.  One thirty-second segment on SportsCenter was all it took to summarize Louis’s entire career.

“Louis Tomlinson.”  A serious, gray-haired anchor stared down the camera, hands folded on his sleek desk.  “The fresh-faced phenom who, at the age of only seventeen, almost stole the U.S. Open from Novak Djokovic.  Remember the rest of that year?  Louis Tomlinson was all anyone could talk about.  Such high expectations, and then… well, nothing.”

Footage of Louis from half a decade ago played across the screen—Louis skidding on blue hardcourt to muscle out a backhand, Louis stretching up to the very tips of his toes to unleash a precisely-placed serve, Louis roaring in triumph.

“Absolutely,” replied the man’s co-anchor.  He had a nasal Southern accent, and spoke at a fast clip.  “Couldn’t handle himself in the public eye.  Choke after choke after choke.  He practically—there must be a picture of him in the dictionary under ‘flash-in-the-pan.’ ”

ESPN interposed a still shot of Louis with his head down, sweaty and defeated, eyes tracking the camera warily as Djokovic pumped his fist in the background.  It was as though he could tell which of the two of them was really going to be his downfall.

The gray-haired anchor continued, soberly.  “Earlier today at the Delray Beach Open, Tomlinson suffered a career-ending hip injury.  He collapsed in the middle of his second set against Marinko Matošević, and was unable to finish his match.”

The Florida air felt humid even inside the hospital, where Louis was lying on his back on a narrow bed.  He gripped the thin sheets and rolled them between his fingers, antiseptic smell rising in his nostrils as he tried not to throw up.   _ It had to be at such a shitty little tournament. _  Louis winced as he watched the footage of himself slipping in the rain, going down hard on his left hip.  He felt a flare of phantom pain.  A brace was holding his hip joint immobile and he was doped up on all kinds of pain meds, but he still had the memory of it—the fall, the sudden popping sound and the horrible, wrenching agony.

_ Career-ending.  A career-ending injury.   _ No, that was too much for him to contemplate right now.  The words were too big and too final, and why were these strangers saying them with such confidence?  What did they know?  Louis’s head was swimming.  He thought he heard himself groan.

Everything faded into a dull ache as they cut back to the SportsCenter desk.

“Now, I don’t want to sound insensitive,” the younger anchor said, putting his hand on his chest in a gesture of fake sincerity, “but the first thing that went through my head was…  Wait, that guy’s still playing?”  His co-anchor started to chuckle as he continued to drive his point home.   _ “Louis Tomlinson _ is still on the ATP tour?”  He shook his head in disbelief and raised his eyebrows, glancing down to see what was next on the docket.  “Well, good luck to him.”

They moved on.

*

Louis was used to being forgotten.  The fact that his physical therapist was ten minutes late didn’t faze him; he just started doing exercises on his own.  He stood at the massage table in one of the therapy rooms of the clinic and engaged his core muscles.  Leaning on the table for support, he slowly bent his knee, lifting his heel up toward his butt cheek.  Then he lowered it.  Lift, lower, repeat.  After about a minute and a half, his hip was screaming.

_ “Louis.” _

Dr. Hung bustled into the room, slipping off her purse and nearly tripping over a balance ball in her haste.  Louis felt her firm hands grasp his waist, supporting him from behind, the pleasant scent of her perfume wafting around him and distracting him a bit from the pain.  Outside the window, he could look down on the row of maple trees that lined the Elite Sports Therapy of Westchester’s modern, glass-front complex in Scarsdale, New York.

“Louis, okay, stop.”

Louis blew out a breath as he brought his left foot down and stood gingerly, trying not to shift his weight too much to the right.  He felt like he’d just sprinted half a mile, shivering in a cold sweat.   _ After ten lousy knee bends.  Christ. _

“How’d I look?” he asked.  He sounded breathless, and felt a bit pathetic.  “How was my form?”

“That’s not an exercise we’re doing yet,” Dr. Hung chided.  “As I’m sure you are aware.”

Louis sighed as she helped him up a short step stool and onto the table, coaxing his hips around.  She tapped his chest, silently indicating that he should lie down flat on his back with his knees up, his feet shoulder-width apart.  “I thought I could handle it,” he said, gasping a little at a twinge in his healing joint.

“I’ll be the judge of what you can handle,” Dr. Hung said sternly.  “Your surgery was only two weeks ago; rushing through recovery is the worst thing you could do.”

Louis just sighed and closed his eyes as she guided him through a series of simple, fluid movements that barely taxed the strong muscles in his legs.   _ This isn’t real exercise,  _ he griped.  Louis was used to pushing himself to the limit, and being told not to do so was frustrating—so intensely frustrating, he felt like screaming.   _ I’m gonna lose my mind,  _ he thought, blankly, as he stared at the recessed lights in the ceiling.

“Don't you worry,” said Dr. Hung.  A patronizing tone crept into her voice as her gentle hands tilted his left knee out.  “With a little bit of patience, we’ll have you back on the court again in ten weeks, at least recreationally.”

Louis smiled pleasantly at her as he let her straighten his leg.   _ Fuck recreationally. _  He wanted to punch a wall.

*

“I don’t want you to freak out, honey.”

_ “Mom,” _ Louis groaned.  “I’ll be fine.”  He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, refusing to sit down in the beige waiting room outside Dr. Hung’s office at the clinic.  Jay Tomlinson was gazing at him from a chair as he paced back and forth with only a slight hobble, occasionally brushing his fingertips over the fronds of the potted fern in the corner.  His twelve-week MRI results were back, and the news had to be good.  He’d been working so hard, and his hip was feeling stronger with every physical therapy session.  He was ready to get back out there and put his body through its paces.

“Mr. Tomlinson, you can…”  The receptionist didn’t have time to finish his sentence before Louis had whipped around, rustling the fern in his haste.

“Louis, just—”  Jay held out her hand to support him, but he batted away her outstretched arm and marched stiffly down the short hallway into Dr. Hung’s office, opening her door without knocking.

“Louis Tomlinson.”  Dr. Hung was sitting behind her desk.  She grinned, looking up from a file she’d been studying.  “My most determined patient.  And therefore my favorite.”

Louis’s mother laughed, and patted her son’s shoulder as she took a seat next to him.  “That sounds like my boy.”

“And Jay,” said Dr. Hung, closing her file and leaning forward, hands folded.  “How are you?”

“Eager to hear,” she said, with a breathless laugh.

Louis nodded, sitting up as straight as possible and trying to read Dr. Hung’s face.  “Go ahead,” he said.  “Lay it on us.”

“Right,” said Dr. Hung pleasantly, tilting her clasped hands up and down on the closed file in a perfunctory motion.  “Well, Louis, I have good news for you.”

Louis felt a surge of adrenaline stutter through his chest, and he let out a breath that was half relieved laugh.  “Thank God,” he muttered.  His mother reached over and took his hand, squeezing hard.  The silk cuffs of her sleeve felt cool and comforting against his arm.

“I’ve got your MRI right here,” Dr. Hung went on, tapping the file on her desk.  “The soft tissues around the joint have healed very well.  Cartilage and ligaments all look as strong as we could have expected.  The surgeons down in Florida did a first-class job.  And you have as well, with your therapy.”

Louis beamed.  Finally.   _ Finally. _  He was going to get to play tennis again.  He did the mental calculations—the French Open was starting next week.  He’d need two or three months to get back into the swing of things, rebuild his stamina and get a feel for the angles of the court again...  August.  The Winston-Salem Open.  He’d made it to the quarters there the year before.

“That’s wonderful to hear!” Jay said.  She turned to Louis, her face a bright mirror of his own.  When he locked eyes with her, he could tell that she was doing the same tournament schedule arithmetic.  “When can he get back on the court?”

“Right away,” said Dr. Hung.

Jay laughed with delight and squeezed Louis’s hand again.  “I’ll call your trainer,” she said.  “You’ll have to work back up…”

“An hour in the pool,” Louis said, “an hour hit-around…”

“You’ll need some new racquets.”  Jay had moved on to considering the financial costs of re-establishing Louis’s career; her mouth turned down a touch but her voice was still determined and brimming with excitement.

“I was thinking I could make Winston-Salem.”

Jay nodded, hand already in her purse, digging for her phone.  “You sure you can get your feet under you that fast?”

“Yeah,” said Louis.  “I was thinking of maybe altering my workout routine to include more yoga; I read an article—”

“Wait, wait.”  Dr. Hung interrupted their conversation, putting up her hand and narrowing her eyes as she stared at them from across her desk.  “You’re not talking about rejoining the ATP tour?”

Louis and Jay stared back at her.  The sudden silence, the implication of her question seemed to suck all the air out of the room.

“Well… yeah,” said Louis, after a long moment.  His eyes flicked over to his mother, who looked similarly perplexed.  “Of course.”

“Louis,” said Dr. Hung.  She let out a soft breath, her body slumping slightly.  “I said you can  _ play tennis, _ but I meant as a hobby.  Not professionally.”

Louis blinked.  “Why not?” he asked.  He felt his shoulders tense, squaring themselves rigidly on the doctor as though he were preparing to return a serve.  Like some sort of muscle memory, a learned instinct.

“Well,” she said, calmly folding her hands again, “you must know how difficult it is for tennis players to come back from major hip injuries.”

“Mike Bryan did it,” Louis snapped.  “So did Tommy Haas.”

“And they are the rare exceptions.  I want you to keep in mind that for a non-athlete, your recovery has exceeded expectations...”

Louis started to feel numb as she went on, his limbs leaden and his chest struggling to expand. He had to focus to breathe.   _ Mike Bryan,  _ his brain insisted.   _ Tommy Haas.   _ He kept repeating their names, searching his memory for more.

“... very low odds, even with hard work and ongoing therapy.”

“I'll work harder, then.”  Louis croaked, his voice suddenly raspy.  “I…  I'll do whatever it takes.”

During her speech, he had trained his gaze on a mug of pens on her desk.  The mug was black, emblazoned with a stylized caduceus in gold and the words “American Physical Therapy Association.”  There was a tiny chip on the handle.  Louis stared at it savagely, not wanting to look at another human face, not trusting himself to.  He didn't want to lose it.  No tantrums off the court.

_I’ll just push myself,_ he thought. _I’ll power through.  I’ll do what I have to do._

“Louis…”  Dr. Hung’s voice gently brought him back to the moment.  “It’s not a question of working hard.  I know you can work hard.”

Louis finally lifted up his face, chin jutting out, fighting to keep his expression stony.

“It’s just a question of what your body can physically do at this point.”

Louis didn't have anything to say.  He realized that his mother was still holding his hand, her grip weak and her fingers lying limp across his.

“Look, I can offer you the names of some therapists who would be willing to give it a shot,” said Dr. Hung.  She looked wrung out, guilty.   _ Like what—she didn't expect this?  She really didn't consider that I’d want to…  That I need… _

Words broke down in his head, and Louis blinked.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Yeah, that’d be…”  He stood, leaning on his mother as he felt his knees almost buckle under him.  He steadied himself.  Then he shook her off and walked to the door, hip starting to ache.

_ Fuck the odds.  Fuck the odds.  Mike Bryan did it. _

“Hey, honey, relax.”  Jay had caught up with him in the hallway outside.  She squeezed his shoulder, straightening his collar and brushing her hand over the back of his neck in a soothing way.  “Everything's going to be fine.”

“Relax?” he muttered, his voice bitter.  “I can’t ever relax.”

*

Louis spent the twenty-minute drive from the clinic with his forehead resting against the passenger seat window of Jay’s SUV, barely registering the turn into the long drive or the imposing Shingle-style mansion that loomed up ahead.  The Tomlinson estate was a five-acre affair, beautifully wooded and perfectly appointed, with outdoor tennis courts and a pool, nestled on a small bay on the north shore of the Long Island Sound.  Louis had lived in a separate suite near the tennis courts during his rehab.  He could see them from his bedroom window, and they were the first thing he looked at every morning.

_ I have to get back, _ he thought.  He took a deep breath, realizing all of a sudden that the SUV’s engine had shut off.  His mother was looking at him with sad, expectant eyes.   _ I have to. _

He nodded weakly at Jay and opened the car door, wincing slightly as he hopped down onto the garage floor.  She gave him a meaningful look and left him alone, wandering upstairs to the master suite where, Louis assumed, she could call his father and update him without Louis overhearing.

One of his sisters had left a TV on.  Louis followed the sound of it, hobbling into the warm, wood-paneled den off the library.  His hip was really starting to bother him.  ESPN’s news ticker was running matter-of-factly across the bottom of a large flatscreen TV, but the audio was a disorganized mess of voices and camera shutters.  Louis sat down gingerly on the studded leather sofa.

There was some sort of press conference going on.

“Quiet please,” said the moderator.  “Ms. Evers.”  He pointed to a woman near the front, her shiny hair barely visible amid the small clot of journalists who had gathered in whatever training facility this was—Louis could see a large net hanging behind them, separating indoor tennis courts from a four-lane track, and he could hear the  _ thwack _ of balls echoing.

“Yes,” the reporter nodded.  “Mr. Styles, how long is this hiatus going to be?  Any idea when you’ll be returning to competition?”

Louis sucked in a sharp gasp when he finally registered who was sitting behind the mic, flanked by his coaches and trainers at a small, hastily set-up table.  He felt a rush and a tingle, the sudden adrenaline sending a spike through his heart, temporarily dulling the ache in his hip.

_ Harry? _

The camera zoomed in, capturing the subtle motion as Harry Styles flicked a tongue over his lips.  He was wearing an Adidas tracksuit, black with white stripes.  His face was drawn, cheeks a bit hollow.  And…

_ He cut his hair. _  Louis’s jaw went slack in surprise.  Harry’s beautiful chestnut curls were all gone, hair cropped close to his head, his widow’s peak a much more conspicuous feature without the long ringlets framing his face.

His eyes were still beautiful.

“Indefinite,” he responded.  “It’s not really a hiatus.  I don’t… I’m not planning on coming back.”

_ “What?” _ Louis demanded.  His voice came out of him sharply, a surprised gasp.  He glanced around, looking for someone else's reaction—needing to confirm that this wasn't some weird waking nightmare he'd conjured up out of anxiety about his own situation—but he was alone.  “What the—”

“You reached the semis in three out of four majors last year, Harry,” a different reporter said.  His voice was loud and blustery, and Louis thought he saw Harry flinch slightly.  “You were all set to get U.S. men’s singles out of its slump.  Why retire now?”

“I…”  Harry’s face was shuttered, his eyes anguished as he looked down at his lap.  “There's no good answer, really.”

“You haven't even reached your peak as a player.”

These words visibly stung Harry.  Louis held his breath.  He felt like he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone, gripping the soft edge of the leather couch so hard his fingertips were starting to go white.

Harry shrugged on screen.  “I guess…  You know, it's not enough to have the ability to play.”  His normally baritone voice, deceptively rough around the edges for such a sweet man—sweet teenager, anyway, Louis didn’t really know him as a man—had risen slightly.  Louis thought he saw a resigned sort of smile flit over Harry’s features.  “My heart isn’t in it anymore.”

There was one last shot of Harry looking out over the small gathering of people, eyes landing straight on the camera for a second, before ESPN cut back to a shot of their newsroom.  “And there you have it,” one of the commenters said.  “Harry Styles, America’s best hope for men’s singles, withdraws from not only the French Open, but apparently—and this is new information—from all of professional tennis.  A shocking development.”

The broadcast went on, people on the screen talking about how young and full of promise Harry had been, how wonderfully he’d improved in the past two years.  How he had been poised to win his first major.  Louis sat dumbly on the couch, barely able to listen.

_ It’s not enough to have the ability to play…   _  The words ran around Louis’s head.  He felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden, gulping down dry air until his throat felt raw as he tried to process what he’d just heard.   _ He’s… he’s just giving up?  How could he do that?  How could  _ anyone _ do that? _  Louis felt the full weight of it sink in his belly, a twisted sense of wrongness.  Harry was throwing everything away.  While Louis was practically fucking dying to get back to professional tennis… after he’d just  _ killed _ himself for twelve weeks only to be told that it would probably never happen because of his stupid hip…  Harry was quitting.  Just like that.

_ My heart isn’t in it anymore. _

“Fuck you, Styles,” Louis said.  It came out in a raspy whisper.  He started shaking his head, his whole body trembling with rage.  The situation was so sharply unjust.  If he had been holding the remote, he would have thrown it right at the TV screen.  God, it fucking hurt.  Of all the things to hear after that appointment.

Louis remembered for the thousandth time how Harry hadn’t called when he’d been injured.  Just as quickly, he put it out of his mind.  He was such a nobody now, Harry probably wasn’t even aware that it had happened.

_ Does he even remember that I exist?  Oh, you stupid asshole. _  Louis shook his head at himself.

None of that mattered anymore.  Harry had given up the one thing… the  _ only _ thing Louis wanted, and Louis was never going to forgive him for it.  Even if they never spoke again, as seemed likely.

He felt like crying, but his eyes were warm and dry.  It took a while for the lump in his throat to dissipate.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Two Years Later _

 

Louis was almost done for the day, getting in one last volley drill on the wall, when his mother stopped by the practice courts.  He could feel her watching as he worked, standing along the chainlink fence and appraising him with a benevolently critical eye.  


“Eric go home already?” she asked, once he’d finished.  Jay pulled her loose cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she approached him, like she was cold, despite the late May air being rather warm and heavy.

Louis bristled a bit as he tugged his sweat-soaked shirt away from his skin, giving a her a curt nod.  It was true—Eric Hightower, Louis’s training partner for the summer, had in fact gone home already.  He’d called it quits at dusk, not wanting to wait the fifteen minutes for the lights to turn on so they could continue.  Louis knew that Jay was implying he should have done the same.  


“I’m going to have to push it for real at some point, you know,” he snapped, setting his racquet down on a bench and reaching for his water bottle.  He shoved his damp hair back off his forehead.  “That’s why I’m here.  To push.”

Jay’s eyes immediately flicked down to where he’d already started massaging his hip, and she raised her eyebrows.  


Louis pulled his hand away, swallowing hard.  “I’m fine,” he said, softer and a little embarrassed.  He scrubbed at his face and tried to let the defensiveness ease out of him.  He hated being short with her; it was so easy to do because he loved her the most.  Depended on her the most.  “I’m fine.  Sorry, I just… I just feel like I’m ready  _ now! _  I’ve been ready for months!”

Jay smiled slightly and rearranged the draping of her cardigan again, the gold bangles on her wrist jangling against her watch.  “I know that.  I know that you’re ready.”

“Good,” Louis said, fighting a small smile of his own, still a little embarrassed.  He couldn’t help but goad her into saying it out loud sometimes—that he was _finally_ truly in a physical and mental position to play professional tennis after two very long, very hard years.  He liked to hear it outside of his own head.

They stood together for a beat, waving at stray mosquitos and listening to the sound of the cicadas before Louis spoke again.

“What’s up?” he asked.  Jay liked to zip over to this side of the family’s property in a golf cart a few times a week, so she could watch Louis and Eric trade strokes and run drills, but she’d never dropped by at this time of night before.  Louis didn’t think she had come without a reason.  


Jay took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest at the question, rocking back onto her heels and staring down at her feet.  


“What?” he pressed.  He furrowed his brow, suddenly very nervous as the silence stretched out between them.  He wiped clumsily at a trickle of sweat that had been drying on his temple.  


“I found you a coach,” she said at last, raising her head to look him in the eye.  


The air punched out of Louis’s lungs as he let out a strangled laugh of relief, adrenaline spiking through him. 

“What?  Who is it?  I thought—God!  Jesus Christ!  I thought you were going to say that Dad said...” Louis let out another stuttering breath and shook his head, trying to rein it in a little.  He kept bouncing on the balls of his feet, though, full of nervous anticipation.  “Who is it?”

They’d been looking for a coach since early April.  The requirements were simple enough: someone who was willing to keep Louis as their sole client, and who also knew what the fuck they were doing.  But pickings had been frustratingly slim, given the rather tight budget Louis’s father had put him on. 

Louis didn’t want to acknowledge the other potential reason that it had been so difficult.  Didn’t like to think about how maybe part of the problem was that no one was willing to take him on, no matter how much money he’d be able to throw at them.  Not after everything that had happened.  


_ I am not a liability,  _ he told himself.  He stubbed his toe against the hardcourt as he waited for Jay to respond, trying to ignore the insecurity that started to darken the corners of his mind, threatening to close in whenever he dwelled on it too long.   _ I’m not a liability.  I’m not.  I’ll show them.  I will.  
_

“I need you to keep an open mind,” Jay cautioned.  Her head tilted forward slightly, and she raised a preemptively placating hand. 

“I don’t care if I’ve never heard of them,” Louis said, swatting at another mosquito.  He was still bouncing side to side on his feet.  “I trust your judgement.  Just tell me." 

“I want you to remember you said that.”

“Mom!" 

“It’s Harry Styles." 

_ Harry. _

Louis was stunned.  So much so that he took an actual step backwards, away from his mother and her absurd ideas.  His face screwed up in confounded dismay, and when he opened his mouth to respond, all that came out was a series of strange, aborted croaking noises that caused Jay to burst out laughing, which just made everything even worse.

“He’ll be a good coach, Louis,” she said, still chuckling as she picked his racquet up from the bench, scooping a stray tennis ball off the court and hitting it against the wall.  


Louis’s eyes were darting this way and that as he struggled to process, anger churning in his stomach.   _ Harry.  Harry Styles.  Harry Styles who just fucking walked away…  
_

“Harry cannot be my coach!” Louis said, when he’d finally found his voice.  He batted the ball out of the air in frustration on the next rebound, not giving Jay the chance to hit it.  “He won’t be my coach!  He can’t be!”

She turned to him with raised brows, and he felt a strange sort of impotent fury building inside of him at the idea that she would have even made this suggestion at all.  That she would be so calm—almost cavalier—about the whole thing.   _About Harry_ , when he was…  Harry was…

“Harry’s a quitter!” Louis spat out, making Jay’s eyes go even wider at the venom in his voice.  “I can’t.  He…  How you could think he could coach me?  After—”  


He cut himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose as he made another unintelligible noise of frustration. 

“Are you done?” she asked, not unkindly.  She took his silence as an indication that he was, and went on.  “He’s clearly not quitting tennis altogether after all, since he wants to coach.  He is incredibly talented, he knows tennis  _ and _ the tour.  He knows the lifestyle, Louis!  He knows what it takes, and he knows  _ your game _ .”

Jay was leaning her weight on his racquet like it was a cane when he opened his eyes again, and she looked so easily athletic and capable—the kind of woman who joined a Masters swim team in her late forties and broke all the club records, who still ran marathons at a seven-minute mile pace and fit into her high school jeans—that he had a fleeting moment of longing for her to be his coach, instead.  For her to have always been his coach.  For a reality where his talent hadn’t outpaced her ability to teach him when he was just seven years old.  For a world where he’d never gotten so good he’d had to move away from her to continue to improve.  Where he’d never met or heard of Harry Styles at all.  


_ I wouldn’t have hurt my hip. _  He’d started rubbing at it again without realizing, lost in thought.   _ But then I wouldn’t have had tennis though, not really.  Not like this. _

“Honey?" 

Louis shook his head, snapping out of it.  “He doesn’t know my game,” he pointed out stubbornly, rolling his eyes.  “I’m not seventeen anymore.  How did you even think to contact him in the first place?  There has to be someone else!”

Jay blinked back at him.  She shrugged and paused, like she was debating over whether to tell him something or not.  “He sought me out." 

“He what?” Louis howled.  He clapped his hands before spinning in a circle and letting several crowing, sarcastic laughs.  “He sought you out?  He—unbelievable!”

The idea of Harry Styles actively looking to coach him somehow made Louis even angrier than before.  


_ Who does he think he is?  Suddenly, after all this time he cares?  What am I?  Some kind of charity case?   
_

“Louis,” Jay said, this time with enough gravity that Louis sobered up and stilled.  She looked him right in the eye.  “I’m sorry.  I knew this probably wasn’t what you were hoping for, but you know I want the best for you.  I wouldn’t have suggested it at all if I didn’t think that this was far and away— _ far and away _ —your best option.  Harry is what we can afford." 

Louis took a deep breath, trying to keep from being totally overwhelmed by the helpless humiliation he felt coursing through him.  He picked up a tennis ball and chucked it at the wall.

_ A quitter’s charity project.  That’s what I’ve amounted to. _   


“Fine,” he said.  “Fine." 

Jay tugged him into a hug, smiling into his sweaty hair.  “Good.  I told him he can start Monday." 

*

Louis spent most of Monday morning going about his training routine as usual, pretending that Harry’s arrival wasn’t weighing on his mind.  He made it through his 7:00 a.m. warm up, several hours of backhand and volley drills with Eric, and about three and a half miles of a five mile run before he gave in and let himself openly acknowledge his preoccupation.  


“He’ll be here around mid-afternoon or early evening, I think,” Jay had informed Louis over brunch on Saturday, after Louis had slept on it and almost truly resigned himself to the idea that he at least needed to give Harry a try.  “Apparently he’s driving up from Florida, so he couldn’t be more specific.”

Louis had rolled his eyes, scoffing.  He could just see Harry Styles roadtripping up the East Coast in some kind of beat-up Honda Civic with his arm hanging out the window.

_ And a fucking Rolex on his wrist. _   


Harry had come from money just like Louis, but he’d always had a somewhat affected way of downplaying it when they were teenagers, and it had embarrassed Louis for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint at that age.

Louis rolled his eyes again, this time at himself, as he rounded a gentle curve in the road and a beautiful view of the Sound opened up on his left, his parent’s hulking house looming in the distance before him.  He wasn’t in the best of positions to be judging anyone about the nuances of their privilege-awareness level.  


_ It’s probably grown back by now.  He wouldn’t like it.  He’d never keep it that short...   _ Inane theories about the current state of Harry’s hair flickered through his mind with every footfall, and he picked up his pace in response, wincing at himself.

Louis had been turning the same anxious thoughts about Harry Styles over and over in his head for the past two miles, bouncing between anger and confusion—about Harry’s early retirement and why he’d want to coach if he’d lost his love for the sport, about whether Harry would be any good at coaching at all, about how much he absolutely loathed the idea of Harry choosing to do this out of pity—but he always seem to circle back to Harry’s hair.

_ I just—I can’t imagine he’d want it so short... _  Louis thought again, as he drew closer to the house.  He kept picturing Harry at that horrible retirement press conference, all washed out with his head so shorn he’d had no curls at all, and then remembering Harry at sixteen—pink cheeked and tan, a sweatband buried in the ridiculous mop of his hair, how the curls would get all bunched up under it, right by his ears like adorable little clusters of grapes.   _ It’s probably grown out a bit by now.  It must have… _

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.  When he turned into the gap in the hedges where the beginning of the driveway met the gate of the property, he almost ran right into the black Range Rover that was idling there.  


Harry Styles was hanging out of the driver’s side window, trying to reach the button on the callbox from slightly too far away.  Even with his giant monkey arm, he couldn’t quite manage it.  


As soon as he saw Harry, it was obvious that Louis’s initial plan to play it cool wasn’t going to work out.  Harry’s body was obviously in excellent condition as he contorted and stretched to lean out the window, and his hair was still short.

“Did you completely lose your depth perception or something?” Louis asked by way of greeting, huffing a little and putting his hand on his hips.  “Is that why you quit?”

Harry’s head snapped up.  If he was surprised by Louis’s presence or his attitude, he hid it quickly, narrowing his eyes on Louis calmly.  “Just misjudged the angle on the turn a little bit,” he replied, without missing a beat.  “Happens to everyone, once in awhile." 

“Not to me,” Louis said, leaning down to untie his entry fob from the laces of his sneakers.  When he stood up to press it to the reader and let them inside, Harry was watching him with an amused look on his face, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.  Louis bristled and pursed his lips.  He and Harry had attended Garigliano’s Tennis Academy together as teenagers, spent two years there locked in mutually beneficial competition as they improved their games.  Louis maybe hadn’t been the best teenage driver Boca Raton, Florida had ever seen—may have been almost legendarily bad at pulling up to a gas pump.  “Anymore,” he amended, rolling his eyes.

Harry huffed a little laugh while they waited for the gate to jangle open, and Louis bristled further, shifting his body so the breeze coming off the water cooled his sticky skin.

_What does he think, we can just pick up right where we left off?  What is he even thinking, coming here at all?_

“Guest house is to the right,” Louis said, pointing up the expansive, well manicured grounds to where the drive split off in several directions, large oak trees lining the way.

“Jay said I’m staying in one of the apartments by the tennis courts?” Harry said, his long arm dangling out of his car window now, posture casual and his Rolex glinting in the sun.  He smiled, dimples flashing.  “Hello, by the way." 

“Hi,” Louis bit out in return, working hard to mask the fact that this was all news to him.  His mother had apparently invited Harry to move in next door to him without asking his permission, and he couldn’t even yell at her about it right away, since she was at an equestrian event up in Saugerties with Lottie and Fizzy and wouldn’t be back until the next day.  Which might have been strategic, now that Louis was thinking about it.

“Is that not...” Louis had let the conversation lapse long enough that Harry looked slightly unsure for the first time since they’d stumbled upon each other.  He let out an awkward laugh.  “Like, if it’s the guest house, it’s the guest house.  No problem.”

Louis closed his eyes briefly, quelling the childish part of him that wanted to send Harry there against his mother’s wishes. 

_ It’ll only delay the inevitable.  And she’ll just yell at you when she gets back.  Accuse you of not even trying. _   


He pointed up the drive again.  “Tennis courts are to the left.”

“You headed that way?” Harry asked, smiling again now.  There was a familiar hint of a challenge in his eyes, as if he already knew the answer was yes and also how very little Louis actually wanted to get into the car with him.

“I’m going to get sweat all over the leather,” Louis pointed out, spreading his arms to display his ratty gray t-shirt, which was soaked through.  Even though he’d invited Harry to look, he tensed imperceptibly as Harry’s eyes moved over his body, fighting the urge to reach down and check to see if his running shorts completely covered the large, curving scar on his hip from his biggest surgery.  He simultaneously wanted Harry to be confronted with the ugly evidence of his injury and for him to never see it at all.  


Harry shrugged like sweat on the leather wasn’t an issue, so Louis walked around to the passenger side door and climbed in, quickly buckling his seatbelt.  There was little evidence of a road trip inside, even after a twenty-hour drive.  No empty fast food bags or water bottles, not even a single candy bar wrapper.  Louis felt another twinge of annoyance, rolling his eyes.  Harry had always been such a neat freak.  


“So, the left?” Harry asked, putting it in drive.  


Louis gave a nod, and they were on their way.  


It was strange, being in such a small place with Harry Styles, so suddenly after so many years, and there was an undercurrent of tension in the air as they proceeded up the driveway.  Louis shifted in his seat, pressing himself as close to the door and as far from Harry as possible.  


As much as he knew it wasn’t possible for them to pick up right where they’d left off—as much as he didn’t want to—he couldn’t help the way his eyes seemed to flick over to Harry on their own accord, as though cataloguing all the things that were different about Harry would help Louis figure him out as a person.

They’d seen each other since Garigliano’s, of course.  Mumbled hellos to each other in tournament locker rooms, caught glimpses of each other at fancy tour events, even managed to see the occasional match—but Louis was still struck by the changes in Harry that had made him a man.

Harry’s shoulders had filled out enough that he actually took up space, though maybe that was down to the way he held himself now, with an air of collected confidence that hadn’t existed beneath a sheen of wonderful, irreverent cockiness when he was sixteen.  His hands were no longer too big for the rest of his body, they were strong and sure on the steering wheel and in perfect proportion to the lean meat of his arms.  He’d lost the rounded, milkfed cheeks, too.  


_Not his babyface, though.  Didn’t lose that,_ Louis thought, raising a lazy hand to indicate where Harry should turn to head toward the courts.  He shifted again in his seat, staring forward.  All the covert physical analysis just made him feel like he knew Harry even less than before.   _Who are you now?  When did you lose your love for the game?_

“I didn’t quit, by the way,” Harry said, as though he’d read Louis’s mind, easily navigating the turn.  “I retired.”

“Semantics,” Louis said, scoffing and then clenching his jaw because Harry had anticipated his response and they’d said the word in unison.  


“You don’t know me,” Louis snapped, knitting his eyebrows and turning to stare back out the window.  


Harry’s loud laugh echoed in the interior of the SUV, even though his window was still open.  “You don’t know me,” Harry repeated under his breath, still laughing slightly.  “What is this, Jerry Springer?" 

“Shut up.”

Harry snorted again and pulled his Range Rover into a spot by the practice courts, throwing it into park.  The clubhouse with the suites was right next door.  “Knew you well enough to know you’d be pretty pissed off about me even being given a shot at this.  I thought you’d be more passive aggressive about it, though.  So, you got me there.”

“Wow, do you want some kind of award or something?” Louis drawled, spitting mad and glaring daggers.  He was suddenly so angry he could barely keep his body from shaking with it, and the thought crossed his mind that he might truly hate Harry—his smugness, his assumptions, and his stupid handsome face.  He was even mad that Harry had known that staying aloof had been his original plan.  “Am I supposed to be celebrating about having to hire a quitter with no coaching experience?”

Harry rolled his eyes and brushed his hand over his forehead like he was still expecting to find hair there after all this time.  “Whatever,” he said coolly, returning Louis’s steady gaze.  “I doubt you’ve changed all that much as a person.  But fine, let’s say I don’t know you that way at all.  Believe me when I say that I know you as a player.  I knew your game before your injury inside and out, and I am willing to work as hard as you are—and I know you’re willing to work hard—to get you back and playing even better than you were.  Even if it means starting from scratch.”

Louis’s full body jolted with offense at the implication they’d be starting from scratch, and he moved toward Harry for the first time, leaning all of his weight on the console between them.  “What the hell do you mean, starting from scratch?  I’ve been working my ass off for two fucking years, and you’re going show up here and tell me I’m starting from scratch?  No way.”

Harry raised his eyebrows, otherwise unruffled by Louis’s display of emotion.  His green eyes were clear and calculating in the low light of the car, and Louis had a creeping suspicion that he might have somehow played right into Harry’s hands.  He was too agitated to care.  


“You haven’t lost a step, then?” Harry said, eyes openly challenging now. 

“I’m right back where I was before,” Louis said.  “If not better." 

“Okay,” Harry said, shrugging and tilting his head at an angle.  “Prove it.”

*

Less than ten minutes later, they were out on Louis’s favorite court, and Louis was running through his dynamic warm-up.  Harry stood behind the baseline, observing and assessing Louis as he put himself through his paces—jogging in place, straight leg march, grapevine after grapevine.  By now Louis was certain he’d played into Harry’s hands, but he still didn’t care.  He wanted to prove to Harry that he was back to match fitness, even if that’s exactly what Harry had been hoping he’d try to do. 

_ Some of us don’t just give up,  _ he thought after he’d finished his warm-up, stalking over to his racquet and squirting some water into his mouth.   _ Some of us keep going even when it’s hard.  
_

Harry was still watching him from the side of the court, arms crossed over his chest.  He’d put on a baseball hat to shield his eyes from the early afternoon sun, and it took Louis a beat to remember that there were no curls hidden away underneath it when he looked at him.  


“Ready?” Louis asked, turning toward him, taking some cuts through the air with his racquet.  “What do you want me to run?  Are you going to hit with me, or—”

Harry was shaking his head before Louis even finished speaking.  “Don’t need the racquet unless you want to hold it,” he said.  “I want to see more of your lateral movement, to start." 

Louis raised his eyebrows and nodded.  He had continued to work incredibly hard at his physical therapy since being released by Dr. Hung, but even so, the nature of his injury meant certain muscles had grown stronger during his recovery, overcompensating for others.  That type of imbalance in the musculature around Louis’s hip would be most likely to affect his ease of motion from side to side.  It was something Louis and his current therapist had been keeping a very close eye on, and it would continue to be important to monitor it, going forward.  Harry was obviously aware of that.

_ Well, it would be pretty fucking arrogant to show up without knowing about my injury at all, _ Louis thought, as he shook his limbs out and waited for further instruction.  


“You have a favorite drill?” Harry asked, walking over to Louis.  Louis knew Harry was giving him a small smile as he closed the distance between them, despite his face being shadowed by the brim of his hat.  


They’d definitely had favorite drills at Garigliano’s.  They’d sometimes stayed awake together past curfew, huddled in Louis’s bed, arguing and agreeing and reconsidering as they listed off drill after drill and tried to make a definitive top-five list for each subcategory.  


An odd hurt twisted inside Louis’s chest at the memory.  


Obsessed.  They’d been so damn obsessed with tennis, back then.  Both them had been driven to excel by a fiercely competitive nature and a true, deep love for the game.  A love for all of it, right down to the smallest, strangest elements.  Louis and Harry had been like connoisseurs together.  Aficionados.  Fanboys, almost.  Annoying everyone around them with their micro-observations about equipment, surfaces, and strategy.  Tennis sights, smells, and sounds—they’d been aware of it all, and happy.  Happy to spend hours enjoying it together, wrapped up in their own little world.

_ When did he lose that? _ Louis wondered, emotion crawling up his throat.  Harry had been the first person who truly understood how Louis felt about tennis.  And other things.   _ When did he fall out of love? _

“Lou?”

Louis shook himself back to reality, taking a deep breath.  “I’ll do some alley drills first.  Shuffle, then cross over.”

Harry nodded.  


The lateral alley drill Louis started on was very simple.  He positioned himself facing the net, outside the doubles sideline, then shuffled into the court, getting both feet over the singles sideline, and then quickly back out to where he started.  The drill only lasted about twenty seconds each run, and after five iterations he switched to a cross-over.  


He felt good.  Light on his feet, barely aerobically taxed, his hip not even twinging once. 

“And another?” Harry said after he’d finished.  Opinions on Louis’s form were not forthcoming.  


Louis got out two cones and set them about four feet apart so he could do spider drills, running in a figure eight pattern around the cones for twenty seconds, then switching directions and going back the other way. 

He kept on going with drills, running slaloms and several forward and backward motion drills.  Picked up his racquet and let Harry trade strokes with him, running forehand and backhand volleys.  Low volleys and high.  Service drills, too.  


“Hands look good,” was all Harry had to say after Louis had been going for two-plus hours, and they’d almost played three full games against each other.

Louis snorted, rolling his eyes.  “Yeah, they’re good,” he snapped, “my wrists, too.  Footwork, too.”

Harry nodded, arms still crossed over his chest and his eyes obscured by his hat as he regarded Louis from about three feet away, chewing on the inside of his lip.  


“Well?” Louis asked, irked that Harry still refused to offer any judgments on his overall fitness and level of play.  


Harry took a deep breath and sighed, smiling crookedly and doffing his cap so he could curl the brim in his hands.  “You’re right,” he said, blinking slowly, “you haven’t lost a step." 

Before Louis had even half a second to enjoy his righteous triumph, Harry was speaking again. 

“Wasn’t good enough before.  Won't be good enough now." 

Louis’s neck pulled back in outrage, his mouth dropping open as his eyes turned to angry slits.  Harry obviously knew that Louis was about to lay into him, but he kept looking Louis right in the eye anyway, and he kept right on talking. 

“Look, you and I both know it’s amazing you’re even ready to play,” he said, still fussing with the bill of his hat.  “You are  _ definitely _ ready to play high-level tennis, which no one thought you’d ever do again.  Your conditioning is there.  Your reflexes are there.  Your racquet handling probably never even wavered.  You.  Are.  Ready.”  Harry smirked, shrugging.  “To make it to the round of sixteen at Indian Wells and lose." 

Louis had always had a bad temper.  He’d had to work hard over the years not to lose it at people, on and off court, when he got frustrated.  Right now he was absolutely seeing red, the angriest he had been in years, maybe since he’d first been injured.  He was so filled with rage he felt like a cartoon character with steam coming out of its ears.  


“What the fu—”

Harry wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise, though.  He kept going, his gaze unwavering.  “That’s not where you belong, Louis.  Twenty-fourth place finishes at mid-range tournaments were never where you belonged.”  It was then that Louis noticed that Harry’s voice had taken on a emotional weight, that his cheeks were flushed and his hands were unsteady on the brim of his hat.  “You have the talent, the work ethic, and the intelligence to be winning major tournaments.  I truly, truly believe that.  If you let me coach you, we might start out with smaller, initial goals, but I want you to know what our endgame would be.”  Harry swallowed hard, his eyes bright as he pointed right at Louis.  “Championships.  That’s where you belong.  Winning a major championship.  We would be working together to get you where you belong.”  


Louis was stunned into silence, his mouth hanging open for an entirely different reason than before, bone dry.  


Harry meant it.  He wasn’t flattering him.  He meant what he’d just said.  Louis could see it in the heat of Harry’s eyes and the shaking of his hands, and the tangle of emotion in Louis’s chest made his breath catch.  Harry had tapped directly into a frustration Louis had been feeling since he was seventeen.  Since his crazy run at the U.S. Open and his middling play ever since.  There was a gap between Louis’s potential and his performance, and Louis knew it too, and he wanted to fix that now, more than ever.

Louis thought about Harry driving twenty hours up from Florida, rehearsing that speech in the car and wondering if he’d get to deliver it at the right moment.  Wondering if he’d get to deliver it at all.  Harry had played him like a fiddle since they’d run into each other at the front gate, and Louis was grateful for it.

He blinked at Harry, swallowing over the lump that had formed in this throat and licking his lips.  Harry might still be a quitter, he might have no experience as a coach, but he believed in Louis.  He really did, and at that moment Louis felt like he knew for sure Harry would never quit on him.

“Okay,” he croaked, a little unsteady on his feet.  He set his racquet down on the bench and reached out to shake Harry’s hand for one of the very first times as an adult.  “You can be my coach." 

*

The rest of the practice was hard, and Louis appreciated it.  He needed someone to push him that hard, and Harry was clearly willing to physically tax him, unlike his mother.  Even Eric sometimes took it easy on him, Louis suspected, although he couldn’t prove it.  Maybe Eric just couldn’t keep up.

He nodded a brief goodbye to Harry and, dousing himself with the last of the water from his bottle, walked off the court and up toward the little two-story building that housed his suite.  It was sort of ugly, architecturally, he thought—blocky and squat, with the same dark siding as the main house.  But there were flowers blooming in every window box, thanks to the Tomlinsons’ landscaper, and his apartment got a lot of natural light.

Harry had gone off to his Range Rover.  Louis started when instead of the engine revving, he heard the trunk slam.  He glanced back, and Harry was jogging up the path toward him, pulling a rolling suitcase.

_ Oh, right. _

Louis’s skin prickled with unease.  He’d forgotten that Harry was supposed to stay in the other guest suite, the one on the main floor with the walk-out patio.  Louis preferred to be up high…  Then a memory suddenly hit him, of when they’d gone to a minor juniors tournament that was attached to a summer camp.  Harry running up behind Louis to a cabin, yelling at him to wait.  Louis triumphantly claiming top bunk.

He stopped to wait this time, and reminded himself that he didn’t know Harry Styles.  Not really, after all these years.

“So, um…”  A little of Harry’s initial self-assurance seemed to have waned, now that practice was over, and Louis wasn’t sure why.  He stood there looking at Louis, and Louis wondered if he was making a catalogue in his head, too.  Noticing all the small ways in which Louis had grown up.

“You’re on the main floor.  The patio door’s always unlocked,” Louis said, gesturing with his wrist.  “Just follow the path around.  My mother will probably give you a key tomorrow, when she gets home.”

Harry nodded, and gave him a crooked smile.  “Well.”  He stepped forward and offered his hand again.  Colleagues.  That’s what they were now.

Louis shook it again, wondering why it was necessary at all.

“Good to be working with you, Louis.  Thanks for giving me a shot.”

There had almost never been a stiffer or weirder moment between them, even back at the gate earlier when Louis had displayed his pit stains, or when they’d run into each other at ATP events in the past.  It leeched away some of the fire Louis had felt when Harry had given his speech about championships.

“Yep,” he said, weakly.  “Go team.”  It came out sounding almost sarcastic, which was exactly the opposite of how he felt about Harry coaching him, now.  Louis almost winced at himself.  But it was how he’d initially felt, and not without reason, really…   _ Why did Harry quit if he supposedly wants these championships so bad for me?   _ A tiny pinprick of doubt hit him.   _ He could just be blowing hot air, using me as a stepping-stone to get some coaching experience under his belt.  He quit before.  He quit on himself. _

Louis sighed.  He was all mixed-up, wanting to believe in the sincerity he’d heard earlier.   _ Whatever. _  The practice had been good, and that was all that mattered.  Harry at least had the ability to be a good coach to him for the time being.

They half-smiled at each other, making little  _ well, I’d better… _ sorts of gestures as they parted, Louis heading for the front door while Harry walked toward the back patio.  At the last second, Louis turned around and shouted, “Don’t get too comfortable in there, Styles!”  He was making his voice sound a little bratty on purpose, with a teasing edge.  “I can still fire you at any time!”

He heard a faint snort, and saw Harry’s head shaking with contained amusement.  Harry held up a hand to show that he had heard and acknowledged, before slipping around the side of the building.

Louis felt a little bit better, more satisfied that they had ended on a somewhat familiar note.  Still…  He wished that the coach he needed hadn’t turned out to be Harry.  Hell, he wished he hadn’t hurt his hip in the first place.  Louis went up to shower, trying to keep the past in the past.


	3. Chapter 3

The next afternoon, Louis stepped out of the shower after another hard practice to hear his phone ringing.  “Hey, Lots,” he smiled, accepting the call and flopping back onto his bed.  “Where are you?”

“Talbot Avenue,” she said, casually.  Louis rolled his eyes.

“What a classic misuse of cell phone technology!” he said, faking his level of outrage at the offense as he lay spread-eagled on his rumpled sheets, entire body aching from the drills Harry had subjected him to.  “You’re going to be here in five minutes!  Unnecessary!”

“Well,  _ Mother _ told me to call because she wants to hear from you how you think Harry’s doing so far.”

“Oh, well,” Louis said, huffing slightly.  “He’s fine.  It’ll work for now.”

He heard Lottie holding the phone away from her mouth and repeating what he had just said to Jay.  Then some muffled noises that almost sounded like giggling, and Lottie was on with him again.  “Fizzy says she thinks he’s hot.”

“No he’s not.  That’s gross,” Louis said, reflexively, as he would have about anyone Fizzy had a crush on.  He drew his legs together and crossed them at the ankles, refusing to go over Harry’s adult body again in his head.

“Are you dressed yet?” Lottie asked, with a barely discernible note of skepticism in her voice.  “We’re pulling into the drive.”

Louis frowned, half sitting up.  “Dressed for what?  Are we going to dinner or something?”

Lottie made a loud, affronted noise.  “My  _ birthday _ party.  Louis!”

Louis couldn’t help laughing as he said, “I know, I know.  I’m just teasing.”  Lottie growled through the phone at him.  She had decided she wanted a small family dinner party this year for her birthday, and had sent out handmade, personalized invitations.  Louis’s, which featured an old picture of them sticking their tongues out at the camera, was tacked up on his bulletin board in plain view.

“What a classic big brother move,” she said.  Louis knew she’d have said the word “asshole” if their mother hadn’t been right there.  “You owe me an extra present.”

Louis hung up when he heard Jay cut the engine of the car.  Then he jumped up and threw on a polo shirt and khakis, and managed to find an old gift bag under his bed for the earrings he’d gotten Lottie but hadn’t bothered to wrap yet.  Then he found a piece of scrap paper and scribbled GOOD FOR ONE (1) FREE LOUIS TOMLINSON HEAD RUB—5 MINUTE LIMIT on it.

He rushed out the door and hopped into one of the golf carts, flooring the pedal to the vehicle’s speediest rate of 15 mph and zipping over to the big house.  Lottie and Fizzy and Jay were already inside when he got there, and his nan’s black town car was sitting in the drive.

Louis swept inside without knocking and saw warm light pooling out of the dining room, happy voices chattering away.  He walked through the door with his arms out, all ready for his big brother hug.  “All right, where’s the old lady?” he asked, loudly.

“Right here,” his nan replied, a smirk on her face.  Hattie Copeland was standing just inside the door, leaning on her black cane, swathed in beige crêpe de chine with a colorful turban wrapped around her head and her face done up.

“I was referring to Charlotte Tomlinson, actually,” Louis said.  “Have you seen her?”

“Not yet,” said Hattie, “but you can hug me, you know.”

“Oh, you’re available, huh?” Louis teased as he embraced her, feeling too aware of her fragile bones.  The dusty smell of her setting powder almost made him cough, but he liked it.  He liked that it was so familiar.  “How are you feeling these days?”

“Well, that’s not a very interesting question, Louis,” Hattie said, as Louis escorted her to a chair at the head of the table.  “But if you must know, I'm experiencing physical degeneration consistent with my age.”

_ “Nan,” _ Louis said, gently squeezing her thin arm and trying not to be emotionally affected by her black humor.  “Okay.  How are your stocks?”

She grinned wickedly.  “Good boy.  Let me tell you, I’ve just shorted all the big British companies.  If they vote to leave the EU next month, I'm going to make a pile.  An absolute  _ pile. _ ”

Louis snorted.  “Is that likely?”

Hattie lived and breathed the stock market, and enjoyed bullying her financial manager into taking money out of her conservative portfolio and betting it wildly whenever she got a “premonition,” which was her word for hunch.  The good premonitions tended to balance out the bad ones.  She loved thinking of herself as a serious Wall Street trader, and could talk about her investments for hours.

Just as they were getting into it, Louis heard a delighted shriek from the entrance to the butler’s pantry at the other side of the room.  Lottie was coming through, carrying a big cut-glass bowl of fruit salad.

“Missed me that much?” Louis said, straightening up and holding out his arms.  “Only been gone three days.  You must love me a lot.”

Lottie just snorted at him as she set down the heavy bowl, arm muscles flexing.  She looked beautiful and very grown-up in her sleeveless summer dress and scarpin heels, not like she’d just spent a couple of hours in a car coming back from an equestrian event in which she had jumped a 1300-pound horse over oxers that were taller than she was.  She glided right past Louis with a gentle waft of her Hermès perfume, smiling widely at someone behind him.

“Harry!” she cried, just as Louis spun around to see her wrap him up in a hug.  “I’m so glad you came!”

Louis’s mouth almost dropped open.   _ Harry Styles.   _ He’d been taking it for granted that his evening would be Harry-free.  In fact, he’d been planning to gossip about him to his mother and Lottie, try to figure out if they had any insight into why exactly he’d quit tennis, and why he was back now.  Seeing him right there in the formal dining room, wearing some sort of silk blouse and beaming down at Lottie as he presented her with a beautifully wrapped gift box, was like a sudden punch to the gut.

_ Idiot.   _ Of course Harry was going to interact with the whole family while he was here.  As seemed stupidly obvious in hindsight.   _ Did you think he was going to appear like a magical tennis elf on the court every morning, coach you, and then just fuck off to his apartment patio in the evenings?  Never talk to anyone else? _

It sounded ridiculous, but in his head Louis had been imagining just that.  He’d been groping for a way to navigate Harry one-on-one, as player and coach.  He hadn’t anticipated having to watch while his sister greeted him like a long-lost relative.  It seemed to make everything more complicated, somehow.  Like their past was closer than Louis thought.

Lottie and Fizzy remembered Harry as Louis’s best friend, not a person he’d become estranged from, and not the person from that awful press conference who had suddenly and inexplicably thrown all of his dreams away.  Their dreams had been so tied up together when they were young, Louis thought with a sudden lump in his throat, that when Harry walked away—when he  _ quit _ , at that exact wrong moment two years ago—it felt like he was throwing Louis’s dreams away too.

“It’s just something little,” Harry was saying to Lottie as she thanked him for the birthday gift.  Everyone’s eyes were on him, and he seemed to realize as he glanced around the room for the first time that he was the only non-family member present.  But he just smiled pleasantly, his grown-up confidence back in full force.

“It’s so good to see you!” Lottie said, taking his arm.  Then, “What is this?” as she felt the material of his shirt.

“Louis Vuitton,” he said.  “A few seasons old, but it’s still my fanciest piece of clothing.  I shot an ad in it, and they let me keep it afterward.  You look incredibly grown-up, by the way.”

“So do you!” Lottie crowed.  “I almost didn’t recognize you without your hair!  You look like you’re in the military or something.”

Louis watched this exchange with a sort of sinking numbness, and probably a stupid expression on his face.  He couldn’t help it.  He took in the soft pink of Harry’s blouse, which made his skin look as delicate and pale as a petal from a blush rose.   _ He’ll get tan, _ Louis thought.   _ Soon he’ll get tan, outside all day coaching me. _  He thought about when they used to compare sock tans in bed.

It was then that Louis noticed he was zeroed in on Lottie’s hand, which was now clutching Harry’s elbow.  A creeping sense of jealousy came over him as he watched them go over to greet his mother, and he tried to push it down, to tell himself not to be ridiculous.  He settled for gazing at the rest of Harry’s outfit instead.  His legs were so long, sheathed in black jeans, with shiny black boots that had more heel to them than Louis would ever wear.  Total awareness of how attracted he was to Harry—how very, very attracted he  _ still _ was—washed over him uncomfortably.

“If you happen to get your brain back in the next couple of minutes, could you bring me a glass of that Prosecco your father is opening?”

Louis blinked.  He turned to his nan, who was waving at him.  “Hello again,” she said.  Then she pointed to the Prosecco.

Louis shut his mouth and nodded stiffly, overly aware of his limbs as he walked the ten steps to his father and requested a half glass.  All he wanted to do was turn his head and continue to stare at the little group that consisted of Harry, Lottie and Jay.  He made it until he had the glass in his hand, and then couldn’t resist having a peek.  They were standing in a knot by the credenza, Lottie’s arm now slung through her mother’s.  Harry said something that made them both laugh.

_ What did you think you were going to see? _  Louis rolled his eyes at himself.   _ Tap dancing?   _ They were just talking.  Normal small talk.  He didn’t quite admit to himself that he was relieved Lottie and Harry were no longer touching.

“Thank you, dear,” Hattie said, as he handed her the wine.  He stood next to her for a few awkward moments while she took her first sip, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to eavesdrop on the conversation over by the credenza and simultaneously telling himself that he was acting like a child.  “Oh, don’t let me keep you,” she added, with a little wave of her fingers.  “Go, give in to your baser impulses; I’ll be fine.”

Louis grumbled out an annoyed “ha ha” under his breath, which made Hattie chuckle into her glass.  Then he lifted his head just as Harry turned to glance back in his direction, and their eyes met.  Harry seemed to freeze for an instant, as if he were somehow surprised that Louis was there in the room with him, looking at him.  Then he smiled.  It made his nose spread out a little, and his cheeks look a little fuller.  Louis had seen Harry smile a few times over the past two days, but this was the first one that hit him in the chest.   _ Sixteen.  He looks sixteen again. _  It was the same smile.

All Louis could do was nod an acknowledgement, and give a brief smile of his own.  It felt like his internal world was crumbling, like big chunks of him were splitting apart and revealing vulnerabilities he didn’t even know were still there.  Harry was almost a sense-memory to him.

“Louis!” Jay called, waving him over.  “Harry’s just been telling us he thinks you can come all the way back.”

Louis thought he heard his father say something under his breath as he walked past, but he didn’t quite catch it.

“Yes, you doubter,” Louis replied, hearing his voice come out slightly weird and high.  He really wanted Harry to notice him, to see all of the interactions he was having with the people around him.  It was like his body and mind were slipping back into old teenage habits, and he couldn’t fully control it.  “I’m pretty sure I told you that two years ago.”

Harry’s eyes flicked to him with another smile, and Louis felt a thrill shoot down into his stomach.  He felt wired.  He accepted a glass of wine from Fizzy, who had just joined them.   _ I’m going to drink this too fast, _ he thought.

“I didn’t doubt you for a second,” Jay said, her eyes twinkling at him.  “But I did worry a little about what would happen if your body couldn’t cooperate.”

Louis snorted, almost showily.  “My body is godlike and can do anything I ask of it!”

He felt his heart jerk upward with nerves as he snuck another glance over at Harry’s face, wanting to see his reaction.  Eight years ago, if he’d said something like that, Harry would have laughed out loud.  Now, though, his face was downturned.  He looked slightly pensive, his brows knitted together as he stared down into his own wineglass.

It was like Louis couldn’t read him anymore.   _ Not a surprise. _ _ Not really, _ he thought to himself, taking a gulp of wine and looking away for a moment, letting his mother turn the conversation to Lottie’s second-place finish in her show jumping event.  It was so confusing, seeing momentary flashes of the Harry he had known all mixed up and overlapping with the new Harry, the one who had had so many important experiences without him, and who was a stranger to him.

Louis did drink his wine too fast.

He was feeling a little buzzed when they sat down to dinner, and felt even more so when they all started toasting Lottie with sillier and sillier toasts.  It was a family tradition that Louis had always liked, one of those things he was glad he and his siblings hadn’t grown out of as they’d become adults.  But that also meant that they were drinking actual wine and champagne instead of sparkling grape juice.

“To my eldest granddaughter,” said Hattie, from the other end of the table, holding out her glass.  “May all her dreams come true, except for the nightmares and the ones where she shows up somewhere without pants on.”

Lottie tipped her glass upside down and chugged, and everyone clapped.  Louis stuffed some of the lemon parm haricots verts in his mouth to keep himself from giggling too hard.

“To Lottie,” said Fizzy, “May she someday return my top that she borrowed to go clubbing in last month, the one with all the sparkly silver sequins that cost $200.”

“Bad use of toast!” Louis cried.  “Bad use of toast!  Nobody drink!”

Fizzy rolled her eyes and raised her glass again.  “To Lottie.  May she be blessed with long life, happiness, wealth, great fertility—” Lottie snorted loudly at that “—multiple offers of marriage, twenty new cars, frequent scented bubble baths, and also give me my top back or else.”

Everyone laughed and clapped and drank, and Louis’s head started to feel a bit like it was about to float right off of his shoulders.

“To Lottie,” Harry said, when it came round to him.  He was sitting almost halfway around the table from Louis, which meant Louis had to crane his neck slightly to see him.  “To a renewed friendship.  And, uh, may her horse never… fall down.”

Louis let out a loudly punctuated laugh, and felt his heart freeze when Harry whipped his head around to look at him gratefully.

“To Charlotte Tomlinson,” he said, quickly, not breaking eye contact with Harry.  “May she always have very satisfying pooping experiences.”

Lottie and Fizzy started to whoop with laughter, while his father frowned and Jay exclaimed, “Louis, honestly!”  But Louis was only looking at Harry, who had an odd smile on his face.  He shook his head deliberately, turning a bit pink as he smiled down into his remaining wine.

Louis felt victory flood through his chest, finally having gotten the right reaction from Harry.  One of his favorite reactions, really, one of the ones he used to live for: Harry smiling ruefully, face flushed with pleasure at being teased.  The only difference was that sixteen-year-old Harry had always looked on the edge of desperation when Louis would tease him like that, and Louis would go ruffle his hair and throw his arm around him, reassuring him with touches.   _ Rewarding him with touches _ , Louis thought, with a zip of remembered excitement.  He couldn’t do that to adult Harry.  But adult Harry was more experienced and sure of himself, closer to a snort and an eyeroll than a pleading look.

They’d shared a room and an ensuite for a while at Garigliano’s, and Louis had always wanted to talk to Harry through the door when he was in the bathroom.  It just seemed like they always had so much to talk about…  Louis never wanted to stop.  Then one day, before a match, Harry had burst out with the sound of the toilet flushing behind him and declared that Louis was “ruining his pooping experience.”

“I have to relax!” he’d cried, all worked up.  “You aren’t letting me relax!  A relaxing poop is part of my pre-match routine!”

Afterwards, of course, Louis would sometimes tease him by asking him to rate his pooping experiences.

Now, as the toasts died down and they all started eating, Harry shot him one more look over the table.  It was a  _ tsk tsk _ sort of look, one that meant Louis was probably going to be running extra drills the next day in practice.  Louis might have almost mistaken it for a flirty sort of a look, if things were how they used to be between them.  They weren’t, he knew.   _ It’s not like that anymore,  _ he told himself.   _ Plus I’m still mad at him, I’m still…  I still don’t understand. _  But he smiled brilliantly back at Harry, and then leaned over to engage his mother in animated conversation.

Before long the cake was brought in—a light genoise slathered in strawberries and whipped cream—and Lottie was blowing out her candles.  Louis’s floaty head was coming back to him, and it seemed heavy now.  All the wine had gone sour in his belly, and a sharp pain was starting behind his eye.  But he sang “Happy birthday, dear Lottie” and ate his cake, and only felt a little pang in his chest when Harry said goodnight and bowed out of the party early, before presents.  Bereftness, is what it felt like.   _ I’m feeling bereft all of a sudden. _  Louis shook his head.  He was slightly drunk, and being melodramatic.

“He did get hot,” Lottie said, glancing significantly at Fizzy, as soon as Harry left.

Louis rolled his eyes and dropped his cloth napkin on his plate.  “No molesting my coach,” he said.  “Not allowed.”

“Don’t be possessive,” Lottie said lightly.

“Please,” Louis snorted, in what he thought in his semi-drunk state was a perfectly casual way.   _ “I _ didn’t want him here in the first place.  That was Mom.”

“Thanks, Mom,” said Fizzy.  Louis hit her with a sharp glare before he could help it, and was immediately exasperated with himself.  He’d never been able to be subtle when it came to Harry.

“What?” she asked.  “He’s funny.  He used to give me and Lottie candy necklaces.  I missed him.”

“Me too,” declared Lottie.  She was opening Harry’s gift as she spoke, and laughed when she saw what it was.  Three candy necklaces wrapped in tissue paper and taped to the back of a picture frame.  In the frame was an old picture of Harry and Lottie, posing together after one of Louis’s matches.  You could just see the thin white line of an old, almost-consumed candy necklace around her neck.  “Cute,” she said.  “He’s the cutest.”

“And the nicest,” Fizzy added.

Louis felt like he was about to explode.  He didn’t want his family just collectively assessing Harry and  _ deciding _ what he was.  What were they even seeing?  It was like they didn’t realize he was different at all.  But it was the truth.  His hair was short, and had stayed short, and he wasn’t playing tennis, and he was different.  He was different now, and Louis hadn’t figured him out yet.   _ Nice.  Cute. _  He made a scoffing sound that seemed to scrape the back of his throat.

“Yeah, most of the good coaches are assholes,” he said.  “The opposite of nice."

Louis’s father, who had been quiet through most of dinner, cut in.  “Just say the word, son.  If you don’t want him here, just say the word.  You know I’d be happy.”

It was the cavalier way he said it, Louis thought, that affected the mood in the room.  Fizzy and Lottie stopped giggling to each other, and his mother looked up from her side conversation with Hattie.

“Come on, Dad,” Louis protested, “I didn’t—”

“I’m just saying,” his father went on, casually sipping his after dinner brandy, not noticing the icy silence that had crept into the room after his first statement.  “That’s a pretty exorbitant salary for an untested coach.  I wouldn’t have hired him...”

“Stuart,” Jay warned.  “It’s my—”

Louis felt a little sick, suddenly.   _ My money too. _  That was a phrase the Tomlinson children had heard a lot.

“It’s my decision,” Jay amended, quietly.  “We agreed that Louis’s career is something  _ I _ manage.”

Stuart rolled his eyes, throwing his hands up as soon as he realized that he’d effectively brought the party to a stop, and was being perceived as the bad guy by his children.  “I’m only saying, I don’t know how good an investment it’s going to be.  But  _ mea culpa _ .”

Louis’s mouth dropped open a fraction of an inch before he set his jaw again and looked down at his plate.  Having a tennis career was expensive.  He knew that.  Trainers, coaches, racquets, strings and re-strings, travel, hotel for everyone…  He hadn’t been able to break even in his professional career, hadn’t even come close.  If he’d been born into a different family, there’s no way he’d have even been able to afford the training he’d had at Garigliano’s as a child.  Obviously his father saw it as a waste of money.

_ He doesn’t believe in me. _  He’d known that for a while, since before his injury, even.  But it really stung.  It stung more to essentially hear it out loud—to hear it implied so baldly.   _ A bad investment. _  Objectively, Louis knew he couldn’t blame his father for seeing it that way, but it hurt with a selfish, childish sort of hurt to even make the effort to be objective.

_ Am I…  Am I doing the right thing?  Should I have just… _  He couldn’t even think the word.  Could not form the word “quit” in his own mind.  But he was dancing around the edges of it, imagining for the first time what his life would be like if he’d announced his retirement in that hospital room in Florida.  It felt like his heart was wrestling with his lungs, like his insides were all twisted in his throat, and Louis’s fingernails dug into his thighs under the table.

Then a wave of fiery indignation burst in, covering up the struggle.   _ Fuck it, I can do what I want!  I want it, and I’ve worked for it.  I’ve put in the goddamn work because I want it. _  He shook his head, remembering Harry’s speech from their first practice.   _ I want it, and I can do it. _

But his father had reminded him of something else, something that sat uneasily inside him.  Harry was doing this, ultimately, for a salary.  He was here for money.  He’d quit tennis.  He’d quit.

Why was he back?

Money?

Was he blowing smoke up Louis’s ass for a paycheck?

Louis didn’t think so, but he also didn’t know what to think of the new Harry Styles.  Everything that had felt settled now felt wobbly again, like the future as Louis had planned it was a tower that could topple at any moment.  And everything he was still unsure about—Harry, how his hip would ultimately hold up—now seemed downright scary.

His head was fuzzy.  He needed sleep.  Another shower, maybe, and then sleep.  Louis barely heard his own voice as he hugged Lottie goodbye and wished her happy birthday one last time, agitated in mind and body.  He walked out into the deepening dusk, and wondered what Harry had been thinking, coming here.

*

The fuzz in Louis’s brain had turned into a headache by morning.  Slightly too much alcohol and emotional confusion combined to create a dull throb right behind his eyes, and the unrelenting sound of his alarm going off definitely wasn’t helping anything. 

“Fuck,” Louis groaned.  He hit snooze as quickly as possible and slumped face-first into his pillow so he could continue to shiver under his sheet, too lazy to reach down and yank up the blanket he’d kicked off in the middle of the night.

“Fuck,” he said again, increasingly aware that he could already hear the faint  _ pock pock pock  _ noise of a tennis ball bouncing off a racquet outside his window.  Louis wasn’t technically late for training, but he didn’t like the idea of Harry beating him out there, anyway.  He liked the idea of Eric showing up early and meeting Harry by himself even less, and it was the irrational, creeping fear that they’d talk about him behind his back—compare notes—that truly motivated him to get out of bed. 

“Harry’s not a spy,” Louis reminded himself, rolling his eyes as he finally got to his feet to begin the annoying, bleary-eyed process of finding some clean clothes to train in.  


_ He’s your coach.  Your fucking coach... _  It felt like the tenuous grip Louis had managed to get on the situation over the past few days had started to slip, and he had a sudden flash of desire to call the whole thing off as he stumbled around the room. To tell Harry to just drive back on down to Florida and move into one of those retirement communities, since he’d decided to put himself out to pasture, anyway.  Louis winced.   _ You’re the one who practically needed a walker for a year and half… _

Five minutes later, Louis was slipping through the gate in the chainlink fence and out onto the court, a granola-covered yogurt and spoon in hand and his racquet tucked under his arm.  He watched Harry work the ball against the backboard for a while before he announced his presence.  


“Mornin’,” he called out, through a mouthful of yogurt.

Harry let out a small laugh when he turned to look, letting the ball drop and ambling over in the appealing, loose-limbed way he had, his mesh shorts swishing.  He looked aggravatingly well-rested.  “Morning." 

Louis took another bite of his yogurt, shifting awkwardly and setting his racquet down while Harry just stood there, hands on hips, and watched Louis eat.  


“You gonna tell me my hands are all wrong or something?” Louis finally asked when he’d finished eating and Harry still hadn’t spoken again.  He shook the cup and spoon like he was messing around with a pair of maracas.  “Even when I’m eating?" 

Harry had done a lot of narrow-eyed observation of Louis over the past few days, only interceding to make nit-picky adjustments to Louis’s form or ask him about his pain levels while he got the lay of the land.  This time, Harry just let out a absent sound in response to Louis’s question, and Louis realized Harry was actually miles away, turning something over in his head.

“Okay,” Louis said slowly, inching toward one of the benches so he could set his yogurt down and get started on his warm-up laps.  


“Your mom said you did an amateur tournament at the beginning of the month?” Harry said, after Louis had done a few slow jogs around the perimeter of the court, and was ready to start with his dynamic stretches.

Louis paused mid-arm circle and nodded, shrugging.  “Yeah.  Went pretty well.  I almost dropped a set on a tiebreak, won the whole thing.”

Harry nodded in return.  He’d picked up another tennis ball and was now bobbing his whole upper body and head in time with its bounces.

Louis sighed, scratching at the beads of sweat that were beginning to form along his hairline and waiting to see if Harry would say anything else.  He almost huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes when all Harry kept doing was bobbing and chewing on his lip.  Still thinking, his brow furrowed, like he was integrating the confirmation into whatever other thoughts he was busy processing.

Louis started on his arm circles again. 

“You’re still a USTA member, right?”

Louis’s arm stopped about his head again and then dropped to his side.  He scoffed a little at the question, walking back toward Harry.  “Yeah, never stopped." 

Harry ran one hand through his close-cropped hair and kept bouncing the ball with the other.  He took a deep breath, giving a firm nod, as though he’d made a decision on the spot.  “I think we should get you into one of the US Open playoff tourneys next month,” he said, his free hand rubbing at his chin now.  “Get a feel for where we really stand.”

Louis’s eyebrows rose in surprise, a quick pulse of anxious, eager adrenaline shooting through him at the idea.  “Oh!” he said, breathing out a laugh, his eyes wide.

There were about fourteen US Open National Playoffs Sectional Qualifying Tournaments every June and July.  Sectional Tournament singles winners were given a chance to compete in the US Open Qualifying Tournament, which took place in the days leading up to the actual US Open at the end of August.  It hadn’t occurred to Louis to try something like that—he’d figured he might start entering some ATP Challenger Tour events in July, and slowly build up points to get back on the full World Tour—and even though winning a sectional was  probably a long shot, he couldn’t stop his imagination from skipping forward to his eventual entry in the US Open.  To stunning the world as he won match after match.  Lifting the trophy…

When he glanced at Harry, his eyes were bright and the corners of his mouth were bunched up in amusement, like he was fighting a smile.  He’d obviously accompanied Louis on his little mental journey.  


Louis rolled his eyes again, giving another scoff of embarrassed annoyance. 

“Shut up,” he said, scuffing his shoe on the center service line and trying not to smile back.  “It was your idea." 

“But you like it?”  Harry was clearly pleased, his dimple denting his cheek.  “You’d be on board?" 

Louis nodded.  He froze suddenly and blushed, abruptly re-starting his arm circles, when he realized he’d started to bob his whole torso slightly too, like Harry had been earlier, subconsciously adopting Harry’s body language as his own.  


_ Fuck. _  It was still so surreal, being around Harry again after so long, and Louis’s enjoyment of their casual camaraderie evaporated, shifting into the same sense of unease he got whenever it seemed like they’d never been apart at all.

Because that had happened back at the Tennis Academy, too, their body movements and even their facial expressions lining up the more time they spent together.  They had been so in-tune with one another that they could serve in absolute unison if they wanted, like some sort of dry-land equivalent of synchronized swimming.  Louis still remembered Harry’s flush of pleasure (belying his strident, too strong protests that New York and Florida had vastly different regional accents) when one of the newer kids at Garigliano’s told them it was almost like they’d created a new dialect, they spoke so much alike.

There had always just been something about Harry.  Something intrinsic about his personality—about the way he was and the way he looked at the world—that Louis had responded to so quickly.  Harry had been immediately familiar, almost from the second they’d met.  


“I was thinking New Jersey, the weekend of June 18th, might be our best bet,” Harry said, trying to make eye contact even though Louis had now switched to trunk twists and was purposefully avoiding it.  “There’s one in West Haven, too, but it’s only like two weeks from now…”

_ Three…  Four…  Five…  Six… _

Louis counted his twists, trying to focus on the precision of his body movements and ignore the growing feeling that the connection between them would always be there, whether he wanted it or not.  That Harry could just slot himself back into Louis’s life with Louis powerless to stop it, even though they were different people now.  Even though Harry was different now.  


Harry quit tennis.  Harry never called.  


_ Seven…  Eight…  Nine…  _

“Lou?”  


Louis did one last twist and then righted his body, breathing a little heavily and staring at Harry.  “So this is your big, coachly plan, huh?” he asked.  The words came out more skeptical than Louis had expected, a shade or two meaner, and Harry’s face clouded in confusion.  Louis took a deep breath, the hair on his arms rising with the sick little thrill he got from that.    _ See?  Not so predictable after all.  Maybe you don’t know me, either… _

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“You quit tennis,” Louis said, leveling Harry with a steely look as he made a motion with his hand like a soaring airplane.  “You were—your career was just taking off!  You were about to break through at a fucking major any second, and you just fucking quit.  And now you come here, two years later, and you want to be my coach.”

Harry blinked at Louis, rubbing at his sternum and letting out a measured, almost peevish sigh.  “Way to sum up,” he said dryly after several beats, moving closer to Louis with his eyebrows raised.  “And?" 

Louis felt another thrill go through him at the way Harry was boxing out, squaring his shoulders and almost stepping to Louis, challenging him.  Harry had always given as good as he got.  Louis knew that.  


“You quit, suddenly you want to coach a lost cause, and now your big plan is… wait for it…”  Louis knew he was at his most obnoxious, but he couldn’t help sarcastically blocking out his next several words with his hands for effect: “For Louis To Play Tennis.”

Harry let out a loud, ugly laugh, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.  “Wow,” he said, green eyes glowing with twisted amusement, “you’re even more scared than I thought." 

“Fuck you." 

Harry shook his head, laughing.  “No,” he said, chucking his tennis ball against the backboard, “fuck you." 

Louis turned his head, watching the tennis ball rebound off the wall and then bounce on the court and into the net behind them before rolling to a stop.  He gave Harry an unimpressed look. 

Harry took a deep breath, the twinkle of dark amusement still in his eye.  “No.  Seriously.  Fuck you,” he said.  “First of all, you aren’t a lost cause, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.  You apparently still think that, though…  I mean, what Big Coachly Plan were you expecting some other, mythical coach to propose? One where,” Harry paused so he could mimic Louis’s word blocking method, “Louis Doesn’t Play Tennis?"

Louis crossed his arms over his chest, popping a hip and opening and closing his mouth, wanting desperately to interject but not really having anything to say.  


“Look,” Harry said, the heat in his words fading a little, his features settling into something sincere, “you clearly have a training program that’s working for you in terms of conditioning and mechanics.  There are tweaks I want to make, but I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here.  Not when you brought yourself back from the brink on your own.  We’ll have to figure out how intense things should be based on your tournament schedule, or whatever…” he took a another deep breath, “but our biggest concern is going to be your mental game.  I said that to you when I first got here.  You’re getting back on the horse, Louis.  Of course you need to play.  You need to play in actual competitions.  Scenarios with stakes.  Over and over again, until the fear is—until the comfort is back.”  Harry sighed, rubbing at his forehead.  He shrugged. “If it doesn’t work out at the Sectional Tournament in Jersey, we’ll just keep trying at other places… obviously we want to get you back on the World Tour…”

Louis blinked, irritated that he was somehow actually aching from the cocktail of emotion inside of him.  Sadness and hope and embarrassment and anger all at once, the tension of it spreading out over his skin and smarting, making him almost twitch with it.  Harry was staying one step ahead of Louis mentally, kept figuring out Louis’s psychological state before Louis even consciously acknowledged it to himself.  He kept saying exactly what Louis needed to hear.  Or should need to hear, anyway.  It should have been comforting; instead, it was infuriating.

“I’m not scared,” he snapped, pretending that anxiety hadn’t been his shadow since his recovery, ready to tug him into its dark arms the second he had a chance to stop and think.  The moment he let his guard down, it was always there.  Late at night, unable to sleep, Louis was sometimes enveloped in worry so strong he could choke on it .

“It’s okay to be scared,” Harry pointed out, with what Louis could only describe as a gentle sort of impatience.  Like he felt Louis should know that already—that it was a given—but was willing to hold Louis’s hand to get him there if he had to.  “Anyone would be.”  


_ If you’re so fucking zen about it, why don’t you just get back up on the horse yourself? _ Louis thought, eyes flashing up so he could glare at Harry.  “Don’t be such a patronizing prick,” he spat out, glare intensifying when he heard Harry give a little snort in response.  “You think I went through this whole struggle, settled on a prepubescent retiree as a coach because no one else would take me, and I’m scared to play?”

Harry laughed again.  “Yeah,” he said, his face breaking into a real smile for the first time since they’d started arguing.  Broad and bright and disarming.  “I do." 

Louis made a loud sound of disbelief, and then his heart flipped in his chest at the strangely joyful quirk Harry’s mouth had taken on.  He took a few steps toward Louis, his face wide open, seemingly eager and excited to be honest with him.

“I’m not saying you don’t want it,” Harry explained, his smile spreading further into a grin, not a trace of pity in his eyes.  “I’m saying you want it too much, and you’re afraid you’ll never actually have it. That it can’t be real.  That it’s not real, you being this close to getting it back at all.”

Louis didn’t say anything; he wanted to turn away.  Wanted to angle his body and stare at the side of the court where the branches of an oak tree had grown over the top of the fence and act like he was more concerned about whether it was going to drop a lot of acorns again in the fall than about what Harry had to say.  Act like Harry’s enthusiasm wasn’t casting a spell around him, drawing him right in.  But he couldn’t, not when that was so very true.  He just kept staring at Harry, mesmerized, waiting for him to go on.  


“That’s a lot of emotion to carry into a match, Louis,” Harry said, his tone sliding into a mischievous sort of mock-condescension.  His dimples were suddenly so deep that he looked almost gleeful, in a strangely predatory way, like he was about to go in for the kill.  “And we all know what can happen to your performance when your arousal level is too high." 

There was a beat and then Louis threw his head back and let out a huge cackle, the tension between them snapping in an instant.  Laughter had grabbed hold of Louis’s body so tightly, it felt like his rib cage was being constricted by some kind of giant rubber band, and he couldn’t get any words out at all.

Harry just stood there grinning at him, silently shaking with laughter as well.  


Garigliano’s Academy touted a holistic approach to tennis instruction, which meant that in addition to physical training, all the students had weekly classes on the mental aspects of the game.  During one such class, Harry, Louis, and about ten other sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys were forced to suffer through a lecture by their teacher, world-renowned sports psychologist Dr. Vernon Hansen, titled “Optimal Arousal Level for Optimal Performance”.  It was all about how to maintain the exact right level of “excitement” before and during a match so your performance wasn’t too listless, or too… explosive.

It was the stuff of legend, and they’d all barely avoided completely losing their shit, especially at the end of the class when Harry and Louis had started to ask Dr. Hansen some innocent but probing questions about various arousal-level scenarios for their own, further edification. 

Louis hadn’t thought about it in years. 

“It’s a parabola,” Harry pointed out, now, perfectly mimicking Dr. Hansen’s blandly informative tone as he’d displayed a picture of a graph with “Arousal Level” as the x-axis and “Performance Level” as the y-axis.  


“Oh my God,” Louis finally managed to get out, hunched over a little and still struggling to breathe.  He glanced up at Harry, and the sight of him, flush-faced and beaming, sent a shock of remembered electricity straight to his heart.  


“Back then it didn’t even occur to me that Dr. H got it,” Harry said, grin still spread wide, “but now whenever I think back to it, I’m like, nah, he definitely knew exactly what he was doing.”

Louis gave a small, appreciative laugh and nodded in agreement.  His attention was split, though, half of him back at Garigliano’s, running through the endless innuendos he and Harry had made about arousal and performance after that lecture.  


“I mean, ‘where are you on your arousal-parabola, boys?’ ” Harry asked, screwing up his face in amused disbelief.  “Come on.”

Another laugh punched out of Louis’s lungs.  It came out a little strangled, though, because his body had also flooded with heat at the words, his face flushing to match Harry’s.  The heat was tinged with a familiar shame, just like it always had been when they were young, and he’d struggled to hide a growing erection while they made increasingly sexual jokes, huddled together, laughing on Harry’s bunk.  


It had always been such an excruciating tease for Louis back then.  Making eye contact with Harry now, he froze, his stomach going absolutely molten as he remembered one of the first times Harry had actually, finally touched him.  


The memory was so visceral Louis could practically feel the heady lack of oxygen as they gasped together, kissing and pawing and pressing up against each other on the narrow bed.  Louis had been so worked up, so happy, so fucking excited, that when Harry had pulled back, pink-cheeked, breathless and giggling, and asked that same question with a mischievous, horny glint in his eye—“Where are you on your arousal parabola, Lou?”—Louis had been utterly overwhelmed, suddenly so frantically turned on he couldn’t stand it.  All it had taken was the mere suggestion that Harry was about to snake his hand down and palm Louis through his boxers, and Louis had come, his hips snapping forward as he let out a long, shocked moan, shivering and shuddering on top of Harry.  


Louis swallowed hard and shifted his weight.  He could feel Harry’s eyes on him now, and he didn’t want to look.  He didn’t want it confirmed that Harry knew exactly what he was thinking about, yet again.  That Harry could sense that even at twenty-six, beneath Louis’s laughter about arousal and performance, he was actually aroused.  It was still right there, simmering under the surface after all this time.

Louis couldn’t help himself, though.  It was as though his chin was slowly lifting on its own accord, until suddenly he was staring right at Harry, unable to look away.  


Harry was just as red as Louis felt.  The crease between his brows was back, and judging by the way his mouth was hanging open slightly, Louis thought he was probably searching for something to say, but kept coming up empty.  


“Lou…” was what he finally settled on, tentative and a little questioning, an edge of humor in it.

Louis shook his head, suffering through another swell of vivid embarrassment and waving his hands in front of him to hopefully communicate that he did not want to talk about it.  


Harry raised his eyebrows, giving him a pointed look.  He clearly wasn’t going to let this drop, so Louis couldn’t have been more relieved when Eric Hightower chose that precise moment to show up.  He came jogging through the gate with his earbuds in and squirted some water from the bottle he was carrying into his mouth before tugging them out.

“Hey!” he said, smiling broadly and coming toward them with his hand extended, oblivious to any lingering awkwardness.  “You must be Harry Styles, holy shit!" 

Harry was nothing if not polite, so he introduced himself to Eric and made amiable small talk.  Louis went back to his warm up, but he knew Harry was peeking over at him every once in a while with an irritating amount of concern in his eyes.

Louis just put his head down and started running drills on the backboard, ignoring.  He could just keep on ignoring it, if he wanted to.

**Author's Note:**

> We began writing this in January 2016, and obviously quite a lot has changed since then. We decided not to change too much of what we'd already written, though, and the fic is still set in 2016. We're happy to finally be on track and posting! We hope you like it. (We were going to post it all at once but then realized that we need encouragement to propel us :)))


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